“Things I have learnt on holiday this week: …(point 10) I would prefer to rest and to listen to the sea rather than to carry on writing.”

Journal entry 26/07/11

This summer, I am blessed to have beaches to walk on, seas to swim in, villages to visit, films to watch, books to read, dinners to cook, friends to host, bikes to ride, mountains to climb, cards to play, wine to drink, sun rays to catch, photos to take.

This summer, my mind has remained passive and my body has become active. I want to feel, not think. I want to experience, not analyse. I want to participate, not create.

This summer, I listened to my whole being,which asked for mental rest and physical activity, and I ignored the voice of ‘shoulds’, which told me that I “should read and write and keep up intellectual activity”.

I’m glad I didn’t listen to this nonsense or else I would have missed out on some pretty awesome moments.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. ~ Blaise Pascal

Time. How little we have of it. I only truly understood this a few days ago, when I realised that I only have four full days left in my ‘new’ home and in my ‘new’ life until a whole new phase will begin. With a month of travels just around the corner and a new job (or no job) waiting for me when I get back, it looks like this is the end of a small, but still significant era.

Half a year has gone by since I moved to my new country, yet I feel like I am only starting to settle in. The sudden realisation that I will be leaving soon made me realise that I don’t really want to leave. Is there any other place that I could love more than here? I found myself asking.

Yes, I love this new life. I love the plants on the balcony, the coffee in the morning, the magazines on the kitchen table, the notebooks on the bed, the wine in the evening, the silence, the trees around the house, the long car journeys, the siestas, the lazy afternoons, the spontaneous ideas for meals, the new-found pleasure for baking, the week-ends at the beach.

Simplicity.

The thing I love most about this new life, and the thing that scares me most about it. Simplicity is not something I was taught to ‘aim for’, simplicity is not a quality that I have heard a lot of praise about, simplicity has never been coined sexy. Simplicity must surely be like love – you don’t know what it is or how important it is until you experience it.

Freedom.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be. No one to impress, nothing to prove, no statements to make.

Time flies by. Life is never as we expect it.

In mid-June I jumped into the cool sea and couldn’t believe that a whole summer of sun and sea was waiting for me. A month later, and I have only been to the beach a few of times and I’m still as white as an Arctic fox. There are so many things I wanted to do, so many things I wanted to be, gosh, even so many things I wanted to blog about, but somehow, time got there before me.

I did learn one thing though – how to ‘sit in a quiet room alone’. And that’s a lesson worth more than any amount of suntan, right?